Life, 1916-08-03 · page 26 of 38
Life — August 3, 1916 — page 26: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is not a political cartoon but rather **corporate advertising** for the United States Rubber Company, disguised as an article. The page presents a narrative celebrating rubber's evolution from natural material to industrial product, then highlights U.S. Rubber's dominance: the company owns 34 of 47 major American rubber factories and produces everything from tires to footwear. The surrounding factory photographs (appearing to number around 34) visually reinforce this industrial scale and success. For modern readers: this represents **early 20th-century industrial propaganda**—when major corporations bought magazine space to present themselves as pioneering forces of civilization and progress. The breathless tone ("civilized man found how these balls could be transformed") reflects period attitudes about industrial manufacturing as inherently progressive. The U.S. Rubber Company essentially uses Life's editorial space as a corporate self-promotion vehicle.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Rubber Tree UBBER TREES first gave shade and a harborage to the birds of the forest. That was all they gave for many ages. Then a beetle bored into the bark and a liquid oozed out which barbaric man discovered could be dried into crude balls to play with. Then civilized man found how these balls could be transformed into things to serve all mankind. The birth of the rubber tree is lost in the shadowy past. The birth of the rubber industry is comparatively recent. Seventy-four years ago the first factory was licensed to make rubber goods. This pioneer plant—the great-great-grand- father of the entire rubber industry of the world—is now an important unit of the United States Rubber Company. Pictured here are thirty-four of the forty-seven great fac- tories owned by the United States Rubber Company, the world’s largest producer of rubber goods, including Foot- wear, Clothing, Automobile and Bicycle Tires, Drug- gists’ Sundries, Insulated Wire, Soles and Heels, Belt- ing, Hose, Packing, Mechanical and Moulded Rubber Goods of all kinds.